Q & A: Juan Pablo Montoya on NASCAR Talladega Test

Approximately 35 ARCA RE/MAX Series teams arrived this morning for an open test at Talladega Superspeedway, among them Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates driver Juan Pablo Montoya, participating in his first stock car test session since the announcement was made in July that he would be making the transition from Formula One to NASCAR in 2007.

JUAN PABLO MONTOYA

ON HIS FIRST IMPRESSION OF DRIVING A STOCK CAR AT TALLADEGA:

"It was like, Oh my God! I came out of the pits, I went into three and four, started listing and said, "ah, let's just try it' and I just went full throttle and went through it and went into one pretty fast. They told me it flat easy, so to try it. I just went for it. It went through it and it felt pretty quick, to be honest. The car really moves around a lot more from what I am used to, but after a while you just get the hang of it. It is a lot of fun, and a lot of technique. I think experience will help a lot in the car knowing when to run high and when to run low. I am getting there, but it is going to take a little bit of time."

ON THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE DRIVING A STOCK CAR AS OPPOSED TO AN OPEN WHEEL CAR:

"At the end of the day, it is the same thing. It is a bigger car, and one has more technology and the other one doesn't. It has a steering wheel, four tires and brakes. It is a bit heavier and it is going to have more momentum, more inertia, but that is about it. I think the approach is very important. If you think ‘Oh I am not going to be able to drive this because it is big,' then don't even bother. I think you need to have a very open mindset about it, know that it is going to be difficult and it is going to take time. But, if you work at it and do the right steps, it is going to be fine. It is going to take time. There are going to be races where we are going to be good and there are going to be races where we are going to be bad. It is that simple. It is a matter of building up the team.

ON HIS COMMITMENT TO STOCK CAR RACING:

"I am 100 percent committed to this and this is the only thing that I am going to be doing. This is it and this is where we need to make it work and that's it."

ON WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO GET IN A STOCK CAR TODAY:

"I drove an old Trans Am car back in Colombia, but (that was) 12 years ago. That was kind of the memory. I drove Jeff's (Gordon) car in '03, and I felt that I cut out of the pits pretty good and it wasn't a problem or anything. It's the speed and the banking. The highest banked (track) I had driven is Michigan, and Michigan compared with this is flat. This thing, it is pretty high and the car has been amazingly responsive to changes, and I am very pleased with that. I didn't know how responsive the car was going to be if you played with it. We have done a couple of changes and you can really feel the changes and it is nice. It is nice to start understanding what changes the car will have and how the car reacts, because that is going to really play into our hands later on. When we come down to making decisions in a race, we can know what to do with the car, at least to understand what we are doing, it's really important."

ON HOW HE THINKS HIS OPEN-WHEEL CAR CONTROL SKILLS MAY TRANSFER TO STOCK CARS:

"Here, the cars are pretty stable. In a way I think it is going to help because these cars move a lot more from anything I have driven, so you can be more on top of the car, in a way. This is, I think a very different oval from anything else we would run normally. Here you are just flat out the whole time and at the end of the race, it is pretty straightforward. For me, it is pretty exciting still here because I need to learn to run high to run low. You need to run one lap high to build up the speed - - all those things are new for me. In Champ cars before when I raced with Chip, we never had to do that."

ON WHEN HE FEELS HE'LL BE PREPARED TO MAKE HIS FIRST STOCK CAR START:

"It is the same thing. Once I get comfortable and really understand the car and feel comfortable. Here it is good, in a way I am pretty happy you can't run with people, because I am going to get a lot more comfortable. You are not looking after anybody. You don't have to think about anybody, and you can run high by yourself, run low by yourself and run in the middle by yourself and learn to keep the car in different race lines. When we feel comfortable, we'll make that call. It is not only myself, but Donnie as well and Chip. We all together have got to make a decision when it has got to happen, but as Chip said, it is one step at a time."

ON WHAT POINT IN HIS CAREER HE BEGAN TO SERIOUSLY CONSIDER STOCK CAR RACING:

"Even when I left KART working with Chip back in 2000, I still had a place in Miami, and my parents still live in Miami. You always hear about everything that happens here in stock cars and NASCAR and everything. I think if he would have asked me six years ago if I would drive for him in NASCAR I would have said no. I don't think mentally I was prepared for it. I still think I am a little bit aggressive, but I was very aggressive then and I wasn't patient enough to really get in the mood driving a stock car and learning to work with it. I don't think I had the patience for it. When I talked to him, I told him I think I am a lot better prepared now than then. It is a long term deal because it is going to take time. I think a lot of you guys are expecting me to go out and win my first race. I don't think it is going to happen, but for me I need to go out there, run, get comfortable. Especially the first year, we need to learn the tracks, learn to understand how the car works, how through the race the car develops to be even better prepared for the year after. We'll take it as it comes.

CHIP GANASSI

ON GETTING JUAN PABLO MONTOYA RELEASED FROM HIS PRIOR CONTRACT IN TIME TO TEST HERE:

"It is certainly a lot off our plate, since we got together back in July there that we've obviously been working hard to free Juan up and mission accomplished as of Friday. So here we are. It is certainly a load off our shoulders."

ON WHETHER THE FOOD WORLD 250 AT TALLADEGA WILL BE JUAN PABLO MONTOYA'S FIRST STOCK CAR RACE:

"We're actually taking it one day at a time here. I know at the end of the day today we will probably make a decision.

I know there is an open practice in Iowa later in the week. We're going to head there next. We are going to try to get obviously in as many type of tracks that we can. Whether that is in an ARCA car, a Busch car, a Cup car, whatever we can get on what kind of track. We basically freed Juan up four weeks ahead of his scheduled end of his contract. So we have four weeks really here to take full advantage of. We are going to get the most miles we can on the most types of tracks we can. Again, that's something that certainly will benefit us and the team and Juan himself in the short term, but I think really the benefit will come in 2007 four, five or six races into the season. That is what we are really shooting for."

ON WHAT FACTORS WILL DETERMINE WHEN AND WHERE JUAN PABLO MONTOYA SHOULD RACE FIRST:

"I think for starters, what Juan said earlier was pretty important. He said he makes changes on the car and the car reacts to changes. He is here today learning about driving this type of car, not only on this type of circuit, but it's about interacting with the people on the team. It is about his interaction with Donnie. It is about them getting on the same page in terms of communicating. Every time you bring a new driver to a new crew chief, or a new engineer, even though they speak the same language, you'd be surprised how difficult it is to communicate some things that happen in cars. So, it is about getting in a comfort zone with that level of communication. We are just scratching the surface of the iceberg here in terms of communication today, just getting a feel for what drivers like, what they don't like, what they really mean when they say the car is "tight." Is that a big tight, not a lot tight, a little tight? There are all levels of that. You might divide that word "tight" into about 50 different subsets. So, when you talk about what the next race is going to be and what is going to determine it, that is all part and parcel of what goes into that decision, if that makes sense."

DONNIE WINGO

ON JUAN PABLO MONTOYA'S FIRST LAPS THIS MORNING:

"He went out the first time and he was flat the first lap he ran by. I think the biggest thing is we are just trying to get some of the basic things out of the way, get him used to coming in and out of the pits, braking coming in off of the track. We are just trying to get some of the basic things over with today because I think that is pretty important when we get ready to start racing and this is a good place to come and get used to slowing down coming in and out of the pits and leaving pit road."

ON WHETHER TALLADEGA IS A PREFERRED TRACK FOR A FIRST EFFORT:

"Just like I was saying, I think you can get a lot of basic things out of the way here. You can make track bar adjustments, bar adjustments and just let him feel what it does. Once he gets that basic understanding, then when you start racing, you can make those adjustments and he knows what adjustments to make. For basic getting in and out, going out and running and making basic changes, it's a good place to do it.